FW 1.56 made the BDP8000/12 a lousy product

I have had Philips products on and off in my household since the early 1980s and I have always considered Philips a sound buy. I therefore did not explore other makes than Philips when I recently decided to replace my media player with a Blu-Ray player with a built in media player. Regrettably, I now feel I have made a misstake as the Philips is full of bugs.

Before the upgrade, I did have a problem with the units poor DLNA implementation for the .avi container (the exakt same files that freezez over DLNA play fine over USB so it was not a codec/file problem). As that did not happen with the much more demanding .mkv files it was not a network issue. My old media player played them fine too, so it is a matter of the DLNA implementation. As using USB solved that I could live with that. Apart from that most things worked perfectly and I was happy with the unit and assumed its small quirks would be sorted out by the techs. Now, however, I have serious two problems that each make me consider returning the product.

Since I upgraded my unit to 1.56 from 1.53 I have encountered two very annoying problems that occur every time I use the unit. The first problem is network related and the second is media player related. They came with the 1.56 firmware upgrade.

1. It randomly looses network settings making NetTV say there is no network connection even though there is. Actually, it changes them to something completely different. It does not matter that I have the router assign the unit a given IP address, the BDP still takes another IP in a different range. My LAN IP range starts with 192.168 but the BPD has set its mind on a 169.254 number. As this is so far off I cannot even use the auto function for setting network setting. Even though my router has the option to force an IP for the BDP's MAC address, it ignores it and shows another IP. Manually entering all network settings and restarting the unit does not help as the settings I enter manually are not always saved after a restart. After reentering the correct IP (as automatic settings cannot find my router as the BDP has decided to start looking for a network in a completely different IP range) several times the settings may stick - but to little avail. Browsing the PC feature can work but not NetTV, which says there is no connection. Most of the time it can still play files from a NAS/networked computer. Resetting to factury defaults works sometimes but now always. After several hours of fiddling NetTV starts to work (actually the network settings decides to work), but since I had to turn the unit off/on after having played a movie (see below) the settings are lost again.

2. Using a USB HDD for movies makes stop/pause/ff/rw work only when they feel like. If I start to play a move from a USB unit and let it play for more than 15-20 minutes the only way to safely stop it is by turning the BDP off. Stop, return or Home do not work all the time either. stop/pause/ff/rw mostly work with files on a networked unit

It may bery well be that Avatar Extended version plays better, but since so much else became worse, I really miss the old firmware.

Got a new unit - now dare I upgrade its FW?

After a visit to the store, I have a new unit as they too thought the old unit's network behaviour was not normal. The new unit worked right out of the box in my network with the automatic settings. Manual settings also work and the unit keeps it network settings after the power has been switched off so there was something wrong with the old unit.

NetTV now works like expected and adds great value to the product. The unit found the update but I chose not to update. It currently runs SW 1.41 and according to the revision history SW 1.52 includes the following:
"Resolves certain playback issues with MKV files having profile High 4.1."
I have only tested the unit briefly and not found any problems with the few MKV files I have had the time to test.

Is it possible to get the 1.53 from Philips's web site? Or perhaps my 1.56 problems only occured on the old unit because there was something wrong with it.

2. Using a USB HDD for movies makes stop/pause/ff/rw work only when they feel like. If I start to play a move from a USB unit and let it play for more than 15-20 minutes the only way to safely stop it is by turning the BDP off. Stop, return or Home do not work all the time either. stop/pause/ff/rw mostly work with files on a networked unit

play movie - after a 2-4 min. press pause and resume movie, then control works fine
this problem has probably every bluray player philips

I have also discovered that pressing pause/play after a few minutes help. I quite do not see that as a permanent solution. As the player works with the file format/codecs I really hope the software engineers are working on this as it should not be that difficult to fix.

I recall reading somewhere on this board that after 1.53 the BDPs no longer find updates online. I decided to test that as my replacement unit ran 1.41. It did say that there was a new version available online, which I downloaded and installed via the BDP's online updater. I now have 1.53 and the player no longer finds any new updates (i.e. 1.56).

thx for your reply on this. Right, i guess i really have to start
new a topic regarding the old firmware.

What does not work with new firmware? It'll go faster if tell you what does work after this update ...

Ok, no, not thaat bad, but:
- NoGo with certain avi and mkv files, that played well before the update.
The avi/mkv starts, for a few seconds i can see the movie playing, i can hear the sound, so everything
just perfect, you would guess. But suddenly after a few seconds more "File format not supported"
and stop.

Well this is extremly annoying and a reason i will return this to the manufacturer.
Unless you at least have the possibility to downgrade there is no reason to keep this product.
"Mama knows best" is not working here. If you catch my drift

Just had a talk with a guy from support. Storing your old firmware would not help.

A Firmware Downgrade is never possible he said.

So back to sender and forget about Philips products...
There is very much information available about these problems. A lot of customers complain about the effects of this Firmware Update ... I spent a few thousand bucks on Philips products so far. But this waterhole is dry now !

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